Basement finishing is a competitive field. Not only do you need to compete against the many companies that do nothing but basement finishing, but you also compete against even more contractors who do basement finishing and then you may run into the my uncle does construction competition.
After working with contractors for over a decade, I can tell you that the best advertising is doing a GREAT job for every client you get. Hands down, no doubt about it.
Once you have that reputation, the second best method is Internet advertising. SEO in denver is a very good investment if you use a good search engine optimization firm.
Using Pay per click advertising can be effective, but once again, please use a professional marketing firm to at least set up the campaign.
And ... get lots of on line reviews from your happy customers!
Sunday
Contractor Marketing in Denver
Image via WikipediaWe have been working with high quality residential contractors in the Denver Metro are since 1999. Contractors have unique challenges that other businesses do not face. The first is high pressure from the consumer market on price, and that ties to the ease of entry into the business from new contractors.It only takes a few hundred dollars to become a "licensed contractor". So you always see many new contractors who wither through lack of experience, or just wanted to build a customer base will offer a really low price. Nothing wrong with this, but it keeps the prices in the general market artificially low. Once a contractor has a few years of projects behind them, you will see their pricing increase. It happens every time, and if anyone one can show me an example of it not happening please email me!
The reason the pricing increases is the contractor has learned that it always cost more then they thought to do a job, and that any job can turn into a loss if just a few things go wrong. They also find that a 15% margin will not sustain a company, and they learn that the money they make is not profit. Profit comes after their fair salary, or management fee to run a project, just like the manager at the local coffee shops salary comes before profit.
The next challenge is marketing their service. After they have run through the normal friends and family, and word of mouth, they will have to start competing more aggressively for new prospects. That is where we come in. We generate new prospects at about half the cost of a contractor doing it on their own, so they can continue to be competitive in price, and build their company. There is a misconception in the market that a contractor who uses a marketing firm is more expensive than the contractor that does there own. Because we are really good at knowing how to find the right customer, we actually can reduce the project cost for home owners.
You can see some of our contractor marketing programs
Wednesday
contractorleads.com
Contractorleads.comA client forwards an email from contractorleads.com offering appointments.
I call the sales representative for contractorleads.com and hear the standard sales pitch. Leads generated from T.V, Internet and other sources. The problem I have is I have never seen contractorleads.com on line in Colorado, or on T.V. So how are they going to generate a prospect?
I ask my standard question of any company a client is thinking of advertising with. Can you provide 3 references in this market? contractorleads.com tells me no, it’s propitiatory. Huh? How is giving out a reference proprietary?
So I ask who runs the company. contractorleads.com tells me they don’t release this information, and the sales rep is getting pretty sick of my difficult questions. To her credit she does put me on hold to ask a manager if she can tell me. She comes back and says she is sure she can not, but they are owned by a group of investors in an LLC. So I ask the name of the LLC. Nope, they don’t release that, contractorleads.com will not even tell you that.
Contractorleads.com did a little service magic bashing in the intro, but I will say this about service magic, you go on line and get the names and information on all of the executive management, and they will provide references.
So, If you are planning on looking at lead sources, my feeling is contractorleads.com considers contractors to be pretty stupid. And if you ask any regular questions about a company you are about to hand your money to (and credit card information) they will basically end the conversation. I say… no to contractorleads.com
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